In 1962, after having won a Guggenheim Fellowship, Sarah Grilo (1917-2007) moved to New York with her family from Buenos Aires. Grilo was a member of the Grupo de Artistas Modernos de la Argentina in 1952, had shown with that group in Rio and at the Stedelijk Museum, and was included among the Argentine artists at the 1956 Venice Biennale. She was 45 years old and taking up residence in the city where Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and minimalism were all in evidence and could easily be seductive sirens luring her to imitative and creative destruction. She resisted those calls and instead reinvented herself, brilliantly documented in The New York Years, 1962–70, the first exhibition of Grilo’s work with Galerie Lelong.
A few events give us the socio-political context in which Grilo makes her move. The first in a series of military interventions, beginning in 1962, turned Argentina into an autocracy that would last, on and off, until 1983. In 1961, the Berlin Wall went up, while the U.S. sponsored Bay of Pigs counter-revolt in Cuba collapsed. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 leads the U.S. to the brink of war with the Soviet Union. That same year, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution confirmed U.S. participation in the Vietnam War, which would not end until 1973. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Against that background, Grilo’s move to New York acquires almost utopian dimensions: in Manhattan it was still possible to lead a comfortable life as an artist and live in a relatively secure social environment.
In a 1963 interview related to a show in Washington, DC, Grilo comments on her being in Manhattan, saying she has “an increased desire to work” and that she is “painting with such enthusiasm as I never had before.” Explaining this burst of creative energy is impossible. It may be related to a feeling of disconnectedness, being alone rather than in the groups she’d been associated with in Buenos Aires, or it may be that in New York she found a different kind of cityscape, disorderly and dirty. After all, John Lindsay, mayor of New York during the 60s, quipped that he didn’t trust air he couldn’t see. In New York, Grilo underwent a metamorphosis.
Sarah Grilo, Pintura, 1953. Oil on canvas, 23 7/8 x 26 3/8 inches. © The Estate of Sarah Grilo. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.
Included in this show is a 1953 oil on canvas titled Pintura—an ambiguous word in Spanish that can mean either paint (the substance) or a painting. The composition is a compendium of artistic motifs from the fifties: framing rectangles reminiscent of Concrete art, then a picture within a picture. The center of the canvas is a stylized still life that recalls the work of Ben Nicholson. A table with objects deployed on it painted as a vertical plane indicates elements of Cubism as well. Pintura is an excellent piece but conceived within a mélange of traditions. The New York work sets aside that dependence and constitutes a declaration of independence.
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